When installing Ubuntu 12.04, all the boxes shown on screen as well as the menu bar across the top are corrupted. It seems to be a 3d related issue because 2d items such as pictures display in the install window and/or icons are ok during the install.

I can upload pictures later but basically all the boxes look as if they have horizontal and vertical tears/pixelation. The edges which are supposed to have a nice shadow effect are also all choppy and jagged. Text on the boxes is barely visible and as the text updates different letters become partially visible.

It was a bit difficult but I managed to setup my Wi-Fi (for updates) and complete the install.

When booting the background image displays as does the mouse cursor but then the screen just flickers a few times before turning off completely.

Pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 gets me to the terminal prompt and I was able to run:
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get upgrade

After installing 305 updates the issue was still not resolved.

Does anybody have any ideas??
I also tried the 12.10 daily build but the Kernel crashed during install

I'm new to Ubuntu but so far this is really disappointing, I was hoping to use this PC for some development projects I had in mind but it doesn't work out the box! I also don'thave unlimited bandwidth so I can't keep downloading updates all the time.

4 Answers
4

Finally a patch to fix this issue has been committed and the updated package (xserver) is now downloadable through package manager! I myself also confirmed this and it just works without the workaround of "nomodeset".

It seems like you have exactly the same problems with mine including the processor (i5 3470) and the mother board as well. The solution that I found yesterday is to disable kernel mode setting feature by adding an kernel command line option nomodeset. You can temporarily edit the command line in grub boot menu and if it works, you're going to make it permanent by editing grub configuration.

Thanks for the info - this fixed the issue with the installer but then I ran into the same issues when the system booted. Will try the nomodeset as part of Grub again now then...
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undercoverMunkyAug 1 '12 at 21:27

The nomodeset worked well, thanks a lot! I just need to sort out the GPU hangs now but I think the other answers are pointing me in the right direction
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undercoverMunkyAug 3 '12 at 8:47

Tired this and unfortunately it never worked, I also tried the XOrg Edgers repo's also with no luck. I do notice though that the i915 GPU hangs quite often, with the edgers updates its less frequent but still happens a lot
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undercoverMunkyAug 1 '12 at 21:29

If you want to install software from ppa:intel-gfx-testing/ppa (or any PPA), it's not enough just to enable the PPA and run sudo apt-get update. You must actually upgrade to the versions provided, which you can usually do in the Update Manager or by running sudo apt-get upgrade or (if that's insufficient) sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. However, this particular PPA has no software for any version of Ubuntu past 9.10. xorg-edgers can be used instead for some packages.
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Eliah KaganAug 2 '12 at 16:02

@EliahKagan - I did run the upgrade immediately after adding the PPA. Unfortunately it seems like there are no updates available from intel-fx-testing since I am also using the xorg-edgers.
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undercoverMunkyAug 3 '12 at 8:45

@FlareCoder - That sounds like some good info, I'll try it out as soon as I get a chance, stuck at work now unfortunately
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undercoverMunkyAug 3 '12 at 8:48